Local Examples, Global Perspective: From Theory to Practive in Designing, Measuring and Benchmarking Carbon-Neutral Architecture

Years of discussion among teachers, researchers, practitioners, and criticsof architecture about climate change have prompted broad consensus aboutthe potentially catastrophic consequences of our reliance on fossil fuel drivendesigns and the roles of architecture and urbanism in this cataclysmic condition.However, the slow pace of reform efforts and the inadequacy of most“sustainable” practices in achieving the United Nations IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change’s averaged annual Greenhouse Gas emissions targetof 3.3 tons per capita by 2050 calls into question the efficacy of professionaland academic initiatives in high-emitting countries. If committed advocates ofsustainable construction cannot reach these goals, how will society adjust itsrelationship to the built environment in order to prevent apocalyptic climatechange? The paper poses questions to the discipline and sustainable designpractice of architecture: Using global benchmarking standards for analysisand evaluation, what models of sustainability rating and post-occupancy assessmentshave achieved the United Nation Environmental Program (UNEP)standards for reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and what new projects offerdemonstrable evidence of the potential for reaching these goals? How dothe professions – as individual practitioners, firms, and professional organizations– employ benchmarking to identify and publicize best practices? Howdo contemporary design practices challenge existing systems for evaluatingsustainable development? To date, even the basic curricular design and trainingprocess components, with integrated project delivery metrics for a robustcarbon-neutral-design regulatory framework, are either incomplete or missingin most architectural schools and professional organizations!The paper will discuss and conclude how buildings should be designed,built and measured with resource foot printing on a common metric scale,which can only be realistically applied and globally benchmarked when interrelatedlife cycles of systems, materials, and land-use planning in thiswider geophysical perspective are considered.For example, the E.U. Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD)has progressed to set mandatory goals to have all new ‘public’ buildings be‘nearly zero-energy-buildings’ or nearly carbon-neutral by the end of 2018and all ‘private’ buildings by the end of 2020. The nearly zero or very lowamount of energy required should be covered to a very significant extentfrom renewable sources, including energy produced on-site or nearby. TheUnited States American Institute of Architects (AIA) has proposed the voluntary‘2030 Challenge’, which aims to achieve fossil fuel reduction for allnew buildings by 90% in 2025, and carbon-neutral by 2030.The paper will outline that any legislative and curricular efforts must be basedon actual, yearly, measured building energy performance balance (kWh/m2/a),carbon intensity (kgCO2e/m2/a) and a integrated building life cycle analysis,rather than on modeled assumptions from somewhat exceptional national‘demo buildings’. If this approach were to be used, it should be always comparedagainst systematic global best practices, rather than only national peergroups of buildings.The paper concludes that the use of integrated performancemetrics and life-cycle-analysis tools in the early stages of design willlead to a participatory and integrative practice planning to arrive at carbonneutral design.

Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa

ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1